Our dangerous dalliance with radical Islam

Whitehall's support only puts us at greater risk from the religious
revolutionaries, says Andrew Gilligan.

Over the past 10 days, like a submarine just below the surface, the outline has become visible of a massive Whitehall row, the outcome of which could be almost as important to our country as fixing the deficit.

The argument is about the influence that Islamism should have in the British state. Islamism should never, by the way, be confused with Islam. Islam is a religion, practised by millions of British citizens who have never sought to overthrow anything in their lives. Islamism is a revolutionary political doctrine, supported by a small minority of Muslims, whose aim is to overthrow secular democratic government and replace it with Islamic government.

In the words of Syed Mawdudi, its founder: "Wherever you are, in whichever country you live, you must strive to change the wrong basis of government, and seize all powers to rule and make laws from those who do not fear God."

Our new ministers appear to be moving towards a clear and obvious policy, of no official support for Islamism. But they face surprising resistance from the people supposed to carry out their wishes: the Civil Service.

There are, in Whitehall, a number of senior officials and paid ministerial advisers who are sympathisers of Islamism. One of them, Mohammed Abdul Aziz, is an honorary trustee of one of Britain's most important Islamist-controlled institutions, the East London Mosque.

Mr Aziz wrote a paper – leaked to this newspaper – saying that the new administration should build closer ties with the East London Mosque. He recommended that ministers should consider appearing in public with Islamist organisations which promote "a message of divisiveness, expressing intolerance towards other communities in the UK". He said that officials should even deal privately with some organisations which may support "violent extremism in Britain".

Another leaked paper claimed that extreme Islamist groups such as al-Muhajiroun were not gateways to terrorism, but a "safety valve" for potential terrorists. Last week, a Home Office civil servant, Sabin Khan, was suspended after allegedly criticising the Home Secretary, Theresa May, for her "huge error of judgment" in banning an Islamist preacher, Zakir Naik. Miss Khan's boss, Charles Farr, was allegedly "gutted and mortified" by the ban, too.

There is no suggestion that these officials are themselves revolutionaries, or that they support violence or terrorism. They believe that reaching out to non-violent Islamists reduces the security threat, and promotes broader community cohesion. This belief is fundamentally naïve and wrong.

At least 19 convicted British terrorists have links with al-Muhajiroun. Zakir Naik has said that "every Muslim should be a terrorist". The East London Mosque, though publicly condemning terrorism, has repeatedly hosted talks by Anwar al-Awlaki, a spiritual leader of al-Qaeda – the most recent of which was advertised with a poster showing New York under bombardment.

Islamism's greater threat, though, is to community relations. Tomorrow, the East London Mosque is hosting Abdurraheem Green, who has stated that "democracy is antithetical to Islam". Even non-violent Islamists such as Green, the large majority, teach their followers to suspect, to reject or sometimes to despise the culture of this country – and to hold themselves apart from it. We, the taxpayers, are paying, as I write, for a number of Islamist schools in which a new generation is being raised to be much more radical than its parents.

In this case, it is not just wrong in principle for representatives of liberal democracy to treat with those who would destroy it, it is wrong tactically. Revolutionaries cannot be tamed by meetings with ministers, posts on committees or taxpayers' cash. They can only be strengthened. Britain's Islamist groups are largely self-appointed and represent almost no one. Their principal importance is that which has been gifted to them by the British Government.

Fresh from its misjudgments over Iraq, our security establishment has got relations with domestic Islam about as wrong as it could possibly get. We have been harsh where we should have been liberal – on control orders, on detention without charge, on blanket stop-and-search: all measures which alienated middle-ground Muslims, without much anti-terror effect. And we have been liberal where we should have been harsh, tolerating hate preachers and anointing fringe minority radicals as authentic, mainstream voices.

That is part of the reason why Britain faces the biggest Islamist threat of any Western country. That is part of the reason why ours is the only Western nation to have come under suicide attack from its own citizens.

The pity of it is that there is a highly successful model for quarantining extremism, sealing it off from respectable society. No civil servant would dream of talking to the BNP, or protesting if one of its speakers was denied an entry visa, or treating it as a legitimate representative of white people. Nobody would even think of funding, say, BNP schools. At the recent elections, the racists were routed. Islamism is the Muslim equivalent of the BNP. Like them, it shouldn't be banned, or persecuted – just utterly shunned.

Thank God our politicians seem to understand this. And if their officials don't get it, they should just get out.